The Final Exile of Jean Valjean
by Wraithwitch
Summary: Sequels are rarely good; let us say this is a coda to 'The Resignation of Inspector Javert'. It's for anyone who thought Hugo's ending for Valjean was poor, or thinks Javert should have been allowed to berate him.
1. Chapter 1

**The Final Exile of Jean Valjean.**

_"Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; __then he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. __One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether."_

Victor Hugo.

_

* * *

_

The portress stood in Valjean's rooms, a shallow dish of pottage in one hand, a little earthenware jug in the other and an expression on her face that was equal parts worry and scandal. Had her hands not been occupied they would have been lodged on her hips in that classic attitude women strike when they are about to unleash a scolding the likes of which might wither fruit upon the vine and the valor of lesser men within their character. "Monsieur! You ate nothing yesterday!" Her initial accusation was much like an advancing army's warning shot.

The man who sat on the edge of his bed, shoulders stooped and apparently in contemplation of the black worsted weave of his trousers as the material hung loosely across his knees, did not raise his head. He made no reply to her either, although it seemed she did not require it.

"This good food I bring you and I am lucky if one plate has been touched in five!" She did not know the man well, he had been a tenant here on and off for some time, but previously he had family with him and a servant or two. It was only when he had returned, alone, with the face of one who had suffered disaster, that she had taken it upon herself to look out for him. She was a kind woman who had seen enough trouble that she didn't like to witness it befalling good gentleman who had in her opinion done nothing to warrant it. She was also a practical soul, and so set herself tasks she could achieve. She knew Monsieur Fauchelevent's daughter had been married and surmised it must have been a very bad match - for surely nothing else could possibly weigh as heavily and as suddenly upon a father's heart as that. She could do nothing to fix a poor marriage, but she could ensure that Monsieur Fauchelevent had a decent meal once a day; offer to take his laundry with her family's to clean, or fetch him a pot of tea. These were not when viewed against the ills and vastness of the world great acts, but they were both kind and good and it is sometimes these small mercies we are most grateful for.

The old portress did feel (and here we may sympathize) that in payment for those services she was at liberty to give Monsieur Fauchelevent a piece of her mind, an enterprise she was keen to start on now. "Monsieur, you promised me faithfully that you would finish your meal today. I have brought you a little pottage. Will you eat it?" It was a final calm demand of the type issued by gendarmes before the storming of a building.

He raised his head a fraction, and although his strength seemed uncertain, his voice was resolute. "I am going to Saint-Jean-de-Braye. By Orléans."

"Monsieur?" She asked foolishly, unable to gauge what that had to do with pottage. Feeling unable to express herself correctly without spilling vittles on the boards she placed the dish and jug upon his desk, pushing aside yesterday's untouched plate and drained cup. This freed her hands which she immediately forged upon her skirts atop her hips. "What nonsense is this? You've not left your rooms in two weeks! You haven't been well. You shouldn't go, monsieur you're ill..."

"I am fine," he muttered.

"Fine?" She scoffed. "Well! I should hate to see you when you are not! Surely this business can wait..."

"No, it cannot. I leave for Orléans."

"So far!" she protested. "And the weather has turned! With the chill in the air and the rains coming..."

"Would you be so kind as to summon a carriage?"

"What in heaven's name is so important that you..."

"I must allow a man to repay a debt."

"Monsieur? What nonsense is this!" There is, as any who have read this account of Valjean's history are aware, a list of nuns, housekeepers and assorted good people who had in their time been quite put out by Valjean's mule-headedness in the pursuit of what he considered right. The woman speaking to him now was simply the latest to add her name (which was Madam Durand) to that record.

"Let this man settle his account himself, or let him send what he owes. It is not your place to..." Alas, little did Madam Durand know that sometimes when we are at our weakest, all we require is something to push against so that we might move forward. She, in her innocence and her concern, was providing Valjean just such a thing: the more she argued with him, the stronger his resolve became.

"That is not how it is."

"Monsieur..."

"Peace, woman," he said gently. "Please. Send for a carriage."

She pursed her lips and we know what Valjean suspected: that she was making an inventory of things to urge him to pack into a small valise and of how many coats she could swaddle him into. Sounding unhappy but determined to force the best upon it, she nodded. "Very well monsieur."

There was then a long pause; Valjean sat still upon the edge of his bed, like one who was gathering his strength, and Madam Durand did not go upon her errand but instead remained, looking down her nose at him, calculating how far she could push her luck in nagging him to eat or pack needful things. She came to an uncertain but optimistic conclusion. At last with a long suffering sigh she abandoned the battle of the pottage, and went instead to summon a fiacre and to prepare herself for the war of the coat and valise to come.

* * *

His expression changed like the weather, like a storm blown in from the coast: different looks washed across lean features as waves battering upon craggy rocks.

First and only for an instant, his face showed the mingled curiosity and irritation that any man might feel when someone knocks unexpectedly upon his door close to midnight. This was tidied behind a mask of hard indifference such as a man would wear when opening the door – a look that says _'it is late, this had better be worth my while'._ After that, when the door was open and the Inspector beheld who stood in the dark of the night, lit haphazardly by the tallow glow of the candle, the mask was exchanged in passing for puzzlement before settling firmly upon recognition and a sort of horror.

The Inspector inhaled, his brows raising like a man steeling himself against an unpleasant surprise. Then his breath exited is a short rush and, "Come inside this instant," he ordered briskly, sweeping the man in and the door closed behind him.

The stranger, who was after all no stranger to us or to Javert, being as it was Jean Valjean, stood where he'd been ushered but made no move to enter further, neither removing his coat nor nearing the hearth and the fire that burnt there. "If I thought I was an embarrassment to you," he said quietly, "I would not have come."

Javert had gone to the fire as soon as the door was latched, picking up two logs and throwing them into the grate like a demon with a handful of unrepentant sinners. Poker in hand as if it was a saber he turned and cast an irritated look at Valjean. "I have no objection to your presence in my house but I have several strenuous objections to your corpse upon my doorstep. _Dieu!_ You're a dead man walking – what's the matter with you?"

Valjean looked at him and smiled, a weary smile, like one who has made a great journey and is now incapable of doing anything else. In truth he was too tired to move; having reached at last his goal, all remaining strength (of which there was little) had left him.

"Sit down," Javert said, and it was not quite the bark of an order but there was much in his voice rich in authority and poor in temper. "Here. By the fire." When his guest failed to act, the Inspector - fire iron still in hand - strode to his side and forcefully guided him to the seat he had previously indicated. Only then did he appear to notice he still held the poker, scowled at it, thrust it amongst the logs and embers to teach them their business and finally, as the flames leapt, discarded the iron amid the hearth ashes at the side of the grate. He straightened and treated the other man to a critical look. "Would you like something to eat? I've taken my repast but there is a little bread and cheese still – also a slice of tart au pomme should you care for it." He looked troubled by the miserly fare he was offering. "Had you sent word I could have prepared better," he muttered.

Valjean was shaking his head. "No, thank you" he said in a hollow voice. "I need nothing."

Javert gave him an incredulous look, arch at the edges, unable to believe that was not a jest. When this did not prove spur enough for an explanation, he demanded with more force, "What is the matter with you?"

For a moment Valjean was sorely tempted to play the innocent, to look blank. _Pardon?_ he might ask. _Whatever do you mean? _But he realized the exercise would be so futile as to be insulting. He gave a little shrug as if it was of no consequence and something to be brushed aside as quickly as possible. "I have been ill."

"You?" he asked shortly. "You know, I was told by that weasel Thénardier and several of the Patron-Minette that you took hold of a burning brand they had meant to threaten you with and placed it against your own arm as if it was nothing more than a birch twig. I wasn't surprised, although they, poor rats, were flabbergasted. But now - the man who lifts carts, scales walls, braves rivers – you'd have me believe that a chill has defeated you? Now I am surprised."

For the first time in what seemed an age, Valjean felt hunted and harried by the man before him. It was, he thought distractedly, something in the voice. It was the voice of a predator who knew where his prey would run and spoke only to pass the time and quicken the prey's blood before the kill was made. "No," he disputed, "I would have you believe that a chill was a passing inconvenience, and that I..."

"I fail to see," Javert said, still in that calm almost arrogant manner which denoted utter certainty of the true facts, "why I should countenance being lied to. I am in my own house – it is an insult."

"You felt free enough to insult me in mine!" Valjean bit back.

Javert smiled, a slow lupine grin. "So," he said. "He has some fight in him after all! Good. Will you drink with me?" It was a question tossed carelessly over his shoulder as he went to a narrow cupboard at the back of the room which was set with slate shelves and served as his larder. However when he heard no reply he cast back a look which was shadowed with apprehension; we should know by now Javert was not in the habit of asking questions he did not require an answer to.

Valjean nodded again. "Yes."

He stooped and pulled up a bottle from the lower reaches of the larder. "I had concluded you wouldn't visit." His tone was even and his face no more or less severe than usual so it was impossible to tell whether he'd felt disappointment or indifference. He returned to the table, put down the bottle and then went in search of cups.

Valjean made no comment although he looked discomforted, perhaps treating the Inspector's words as a rebuke. A moment later he sought to leave the topic behind by asking: "How many days did it take you to have the long and the short of this town pegged? Did you know everyone's measure within one week, or was it two?"

Javert tipped his head a little to the side and his eyes narrowed in an attitude of calculation. "Now that is interesting," he said. "You travel from Paris, not an insignificant journey to make when the wind and rain has begun, and you ask me about my occupation. Forgive me if I find it a little strange, considering when last we met you were at such pains to show me that I am not my work." The briefest of pauses and he added, "Ten. It took me ten days." One side of his mouth twitched upwards in a crooked smile because no matter what path he walked nor how full or lacking his soul, the Inspector would always take pride in his job and pleasure in his abilities – there are some traits the Seine cannot wash away.

Valjean did his best not to shiver; sitting by the fire had so far only served to show him how deep into his bones the cold had seeped. "You once told me," he said, "you could be a farmer for all the difference it made. You might have thought so, but you couldn't. You'd make a terrible farmer."

"I would," he conceded easily. Standing there neat as a city copy-clerk in his black, silver buttoned waistcoat, but with a light in his eyes that professed him a more dangerous creature by far, there was not a man in the world harder to imagine in the role of _villein._

"How is it here?"

"Stay a day or so and you shall find out." An improcerous laugh. "Your deplorable habit of asking the wrong question is still running rampant I see."

"Then correct me."

"This is a small town, passably prosperous and no different from a hundred other small towns. You are not curious about it – and it's no wonder for there is scarcely a single point of interest historical, geographical, social or, god help us, political within it. You are curious to know whether I speak to people. Whether I am a part of the community here, or whether I stalk solitary through the shadows like the _Loup Garou_ of old." (I had once said Javert did not know of that sobriquet bequeathed him by the gutter-thieves of Paris, but it would appear in this matter I was wrong.)

"Well then?"

Narrow shoulders shrugged. "Oh, I am considered a forbidding fellow still. But Madam Bellau who keeps the bakery and is seen by many as a miserable thing is generous in her smiles and has twice gifted me brioche. And whilst they do not - and I hazard would never – dare to ask me to join in their singing, Messieurs Lacasse, Aubin and Grenier have asked me to share a drink with them at the tavern. Upon occasion I even accept. So," he concluded, "I am perhaps not as forbidding as all that."

"That is good to hear."

He placed the two wine beakers he had been holding on the table, each with a little more force than was necessary, and unstoppered the bottle. "Since I have not this night just been pulled from a river, I am in a stronger position than our previous encounter. As such – I warn you - I refuse to put up with your endless badgering. Especially when you arrive at my door in the middle of the night like a wandering grave-wight." He poured them each a measure and handed Valjean his, frowning as it was grasped in both hands as if its weight was thrice what it truly was. "What has happened to you?" he demanded gruffly. And then quietly, "Is there anything I can do?"

Valjean smiled because even with a measure of humanity within his inverteratist character, Javert still lanced unfailingly to the heart of matters. For some moments he did not answer and his mind turned like a divining pendulum over the face of a map, spinning but unable to chose a single direction.

He had come here because he had felt he was dying; it was not a mortal malady that claimed him, but rather an immortal one. His soul was broken and bereft and so his body failed; Valjean felt his own decline with the hopeless impotence of a man who watches the sun go down and knows soon he must surrender himself to the cold of the night. He had thought he'd made the journey as a final pilgrimage, a farewell to his past. And so that Javert in his spiky and scrupulous manner would not remain vexed by the debt of the shirt given a year back.

But now Valjean felt these reasons were hollow; they formed a neat veneer over a pit of tangled thoughts which were more confused and terrible by far. He recoiled from this writhing viper's nest in his mind, recoiled from the edges of unpleasant serpentine thoughts and from the fact that they were his.

Javert watched as Valjean's face turned griseous, a hue he hadn't been aware living flesh was capable of paling to, and the man stumbled to his feet, the chair scraping behind him, the cup almost spilling from his grasp before he set it on the table. "Forgive me," he mumbled, "I should not have come."

_"Sit down."_ It was neither shout nor roar but it possessed the mark of authority unleashed with all the precision and brutality of a whip. It was not a command that could be disobeyed.

Valjean sat, dropping back into the chair as if hamstrung.


	2. Chapter 2

Weighed down by his troubles, Valjean had paid little attention to the house he found himself in, whereas had he visited in better circumstances he would have been very interested indeed to see what the Inspector had made of his residence. Let us, in his stead, open our eyes and look now.

It was an old house, which made it neither as tall nor as fussy upon the division of rooms as its modern kin. Along the far wall by a door that lead to a garden, was a sink and a wide cutting block set beneath the window. Then came the narrow larder cupboard, and in the alcove formed between this and the stairs, shelves had been fitted to hold crockery and kettle, pans, cutlery and other kitchen necessities.

Away from the back wall, the character of the room changed from that of kitchen to that of gentleman's drawing room. To the left what had once been a large linen press or dresser had been adapted and forced into service as a combination of library and writing-desk. The wood still held a faint scent of beeswax, lavender and tarragon as if haunted by the ghost of its earlier life. A high-backed, battered leather chaise sat before the desk.

Opposite was the table close to the hearth with chairs at either side, where the two men currently sat. Behind Valjean on the mantelpiece were three handsome brass candle sticks, a pewter plate polished so it shone almost as fair as silver, and two jugs with patterns upon their glaze. The walls were unadorned and had at the start of their existence been painted what must have been a deep shade close to mulberry; this over years assaulted by both sun and wash-cloth, had faded to an agreeable stormy colour. The floor was tiled in stone or clay of a bleak hue, but across this at an angle so it traversed from desk to hearth had been lain a vast rug which was the most singular thing by far about the entire room. It was old, of that there was no doubt, and its span proclaimed it had come from grander surroundings before its retirement here. The weave although worn was still thick, the thread unusual shades of birch-bark, royal blue, dove grey, indigo and gold. The pattern upon it was more mystifying still: it spread naturally like flames or vines, sometimes suggesting clouds, sometimes brambles, here and there with the look of a Celestial dragon.

There is, as with all things of character and antiquity a story as to how it came to be within old Archard Javert's house. But there is a time and a place for such things, and I shall not preempt Valjean in the question of how Javert's family came to have a Tibetan carpet in their possession. For now, let us be content with its splendor, and return to the two men sitting at either side of the scrubbed oak table.

There was silence comprised of two different notes of quiet: Valjean's grave stillness of defeat, and Javert's voiceless calculating as he sought through questions in his mind and discarded them like stale bread when they proved unsatisfactory. It was not, as has been shown before, a silence that lasted over-long. Two men with such broad similarities, stark differences and long histories cannot sit in one another's company without speaking: they (much as they might deny it) delight too much in cataloguing the points of similarity and the chasms of difference between them, like cartographers mapping the land.

"A year's absence teaches me that you were unable to journey here without cause. Perhaps," Javert suggested, "that you did not wish to journey here at all..."

That sparked the beaten man to find his voice. "No! I..."

Javert held up his hand. "Peace! It doesn't matter to me why you did not visit. Rather, I am interested in why you _did."_ Silver eyes studied Valjean from across the table with the cool intensity of a logistician asking why the mouse ran hither instead of thither in its search for food. "I must surmise – given your aptitude for it – that you came here because you were running away. I mean no disrespect; but you have had a lifetime of being hunted – in such a situation one fights or one runs. You, after Toulon, always had a reluctance to do violence. So you ran," he concluded, "to a place you hoped would lend you aid or at least a haven. _Here._ That being the case, it would be tantamount to fecklessness to leave." His words held a casual detachment, as if he was not a player in the scene but a member of the audience and could wash his hands of the whole matter whenever he wished simply by leaving his seat.

A second silence, shorter yet more profound than the first. "Valjean!" the Inspector said, leaning forward a little, his voice filled with an urgency and feeling it had earlier lacked. "Make a stand. What is so terrible it would bring you here from Paris and yet you fear to tell me?" He looked equal parts angered and entreating; his brows had burrowed down at the bridge of his nose and his forehead showed two vertical lines that would not look out of place upon a statue chiselled by a master mason. _"Please,"_ he said quietly, and his voice was so low and the sincerity in it so great that were I not able to tell you emphatically that it was so you would doubt your own ears.

As if to compound this doubt, Javert drank a mouthful of wine and placed the half-full beaker upon the table with a snap. "You are killing yourself," he announced coldly to the room in general. A grimace and his tone rose from matter of fact to false levity. "An act which is more commonly termed suicide and is, I do seem to recall reading somewhere, a mortal sin..."

"I could never..."

Javert swore, viciously and at length, a string of invectives that would give even the most seasoned dock-worker pause for thought. He passed his hand over his own eyes, resting his fingers for a moment by those twin lines which knifed down above his nose, natural scars forged from frowning and so ingrained that they never entirely disappeared even in repose. "Let's not waste time in pointless argument; I'll explain it for you. I know very well you can swim. If I saw you thrown into the sea and watched as you lifted not one limb to save yourself... Well. I would call that suicide – no, worse - I would call that bowing out. At least have the courage of your conviction if you're set upon such a task – take a pistol and blow out your own brains. I'm certain I could find you one if the need was that great."

Valjean's mind had not recovered from its earlier exhaustion and turmoil and so he responded to the words offered to him like one in shock, addressing only the most immediate point, and that with a bewildered air. "I do not – I - I could not kill myself..."

"No?" Javert asked with an unpleasant edge. "So what is it you have been doing? Your hand is unsteady, your eyes are dull, the air rasps in your throat, you are gaunt and wasted – you need a shroud not a coat! _Pardieu,"_ he spat, "there are galley slaves twice your age and thrice your strength!"

Despite himself Valjean gave the shadow of a smile. "If they are, that places them well beyond their prescribed three score years and ten."

"Are you calling me a liar?" the Inspector demanded imperiously.

"I should not dare."

He seemed disappointed. "Very well. It was an exaggeration. But that does not dismiss the truth at its core. How long is it since you ate?"

It was clear Valjean did not wish to answer. "A day or so," he allowed.

"And before that?"

Valjean remained silent.

Javert braced his hands against the table and levered himself to his feet. He went to the slate-shelved cupboard and retrieved something on a plate there, and another item from a cutlery box nearby. Long legs made short work of the journey back to the fireside table; he placed a wide slice of glazed tart before his guest as well as a thin-carved horn spoon with a silver tip to its handle before sinking to his seat again.

The ex-convict stared at both with the eyes of a man who feared either might kill him.

Javert tipped his head back on his neck as if it was broken and stared at the plaster and beams of the ceiling for some seconds. Then in a violently fluid movement he quit his chair, retrieved another spoon from the cutlery box and returned. Sitting down with the same aggressive elegance he moved the plate to the middle of the table, stabbed a sliver from off the tart with his spoon and ate it. Every action was a wolf's challenge, every line of him that which proclaimed, _'step up and prove me wrong, cur'._ His eyes reflected like lightening in the firelight. "Now you. Or you are forfeit."

Tension held the moment between ultimatum and choice; and then slowly, uncertainly, Valjean reached out and took up the silver-tipped spoon; with it he cut a morsel of tart and ate it.

To we who observe such a scene it is strange; why should Javert abandon conversation and instead make a battle ground of a pastry? And furthermore, why should Valjean let him? With your leave, I shall explain. The Inspector knew that this visit was some final gambit on Valjean's behalf – a physic of kill or cure for what ailed him. More importantly, and here we must thank God for the man's experience and intuition, he knew that if Valjean had not wanted to live he would not have come. Armed with that knowledge he saw a path, one filled with a certain amount of coercion and bullying, which might set things aright.

Javert's soul was not without subtlety, but above all he loved expedience. This game – this challenge – was the clearest path he saw to getting what he desired. He smiled, a wide, harsh flash of teeth. "We will eat. And we will talk." Seeped within those words was a dark and crushing threat of what might happen were his wishes in this matter not obeyed. Javert had as little idea of what he would do if thwarted as Valjean did – and in truth they both knew this too – but somehow that made the unknowable threat all the more terrible.

"Here, I'll begin," he said as if he was offering a boon. "The boy – the revolutionary you rescued. What happened to him?" It will surprise us not at all that the Inspector's supposed beneficence was pointed in the extreme.

"He went home," Valjean imbued the words with a tranquillity he did not feel.

"I know that," he chided. "A poor answer." He nodded to the plate on the table indicating his guest's failure had earnt him another spoonful of the pastry. Mechanically, Valjean obeyed. "Did he live?"

"He did."

"Hm. Were his family grateful?"

"Doubtless they were."

"Doubtless…?" Grey eyes sparked to hold an edge like napped flint and he studied Valjean for several endless seconds. At last he huffed and his mouth twisted in exasperation. "You did something," he accused. "Something inconceivable and stupid and infuriating that I simply will not understand. Out with it. What did you do Valjean?"

"Nothing," he said humbly.

"Nothing? You must have..." The Inspector's words faded as thoughts and possibilities were sorted in his mind and slotted into their most likely places. "You didn't tell them, did you? The little idiot doesn't know it was you he owes his life to." He took a swallow of wine. "Why didn't you tell him?"

"He has other matters to concern him."

"Valjean!" The Inspector had not previously made much use of the ex-convict's name, but now he seemed determined to address the lack and with as much asperity as he could muster. "I did not seek what concerned him – I don't give a damn for his concerns – I sought why you had not told him." A beat. "He has asked who saved him I take it? Oh _mon Dieu_ – tell me he asked!"

"He asked."

"So?"

"I didn't tell him. His mysterious rescuer remains just that – a mystery. The deed was not done for his thanks." Valjean sought to sound reproachful, like a priest reminding his flock that goodness is its own reward. However Javert had not spent overly much of his life listening to priests and as such picked a differing detail from Valjean's statement.

"Why did you do it?" In what he considered a show of good faith, Javert took a second narrow spoonful of caramelised apple.

Valjean looked at the table for some moments and then exchanged his spoon for the cup, gazing bleakly at the dark-hued wine it held. "Atonement." There was a fault-line of uncertainty in his voice.

"For what?"

"I'd wished him dead. I knew he was going to the barricades; I was pleased to think he'd die there." There was anguish in his words and countenance.

"You rescued a man as penance for wishing him dead? No," Javert opinioned. "No, no, no – this is no good. You must have known full well I would ask you questions before you came here, just as you know I have a nose for the truth. If this is to be an interrogation then you can damned well make a full confession or let us drop the subject entirely and speak on the weather instead. Do not fob me off with some half-cut explanation that makes you sound a positive imbecile. Why did you rescue the boy? And – unless you were possessed of a singular political fervour that came and went like a summer cold then you were at the barricade to look out for him. You didn't rescue him by chance or for principle's sake. Who is he to you?"

Valjean raised the cup carefully to his lips and took a swallow of wine as if it was hemlock. "He is the man my daughter Cosette fell in love with."

Javert scratched behind his ear. "You wouldn't be the first father to think ill of their daughter's choice of lover. Come to that if one was to condemn and sentence a man for the thoughts in his head I doubt there would be a single person left at liberty."

Valjean raised his eyes and a half-hearted smile. "Not even you?"

"Not even I," he agreed and drank a mouthful of wine himself. "Very well. It is safe to assume that after hating the boy and wishing him dead, you suffer a fit of conscience and decide instead to be his guardian angel, yes? Not something I hasten to add I would believe of many men, but for you I'll credit it. And you mention nothing of this act of heroics to the boy or his family because... what? You believe it is an imposition to put him in your debt?"

"Something like that."

_"Something like that,"_ Javert echoed and then sighed. "Do these dramas befall you?" he mused, "or do you create them for yourself?"

"Says the man who jumped into the Seine."

"So evades the man who followed him!" he shot back. "I'll admit I've had my moments, but I do not delight in making my own life difficult. One could not take on oath the same was true for you. Oh do not look at me like that – come, what is it?" His tone although still brisk was mitescent. "What am I missing? I have a mind for puzzles but I don't indulge in Marseilles cards – tell me the rest of it. Or eat," he offered with false magnanimity.

Valjean took another spoonful, although within his heart and beneath Javert's waiting gaze he knew it was a brief delay and not a pardon. He swallowed. "They are married."

"They? – your daughter and the revolutionary..."

"Baron Pontmercy," he corrected.

"Congratulations and felicitations upon them both," Javert said vaguely. "It is nice to know that the Baron's ideals of Egalité were not a front. Marrying for love the fatherless daughter of a dead street jade." His words were bland, absent of spite but absent of faith also as if he was waiting to hear the catch.

"I drafted papers for her; gave her a respectable family. I am simply her guardian. Cosette's unhappy past is unknown."

Javert snorted, vindicated. "Hm. Are you welcome in their house?"

"I was."

_"Dieu,_ Valjean," he muttered, an edge of distemper in his tone which clearly asked again – _what did you do?_

"I told Cosette she no longer needed a father, she had a husband."

The Inspector uttered a strangled bark of disbelief. "How do you voice such idiocy with a clear conscience? I don't even know what to say to that."

Valjean's head bowed a little. "Cosette said something similar."

"So, the young lady has more sense than I previously credited her with. What else?"

We, who from this narrative know Valjean like a friend or a brother, have seen his trials and triumphs as they are unfolded before our eyes, would scarce believe that the man who sat in the little house in the Saint Loup district was the same man who had a year ago dragged Marius through the mire of the Paris sewers to safety and scant hours later pulled Javert from the river, then sat up the rest of the night arguing philosophy and the doctrine of God's grace. That man, broad of shoulder, strong of arm, iron of will and with face and eyes possessed of more vitality than the silver-white of his hair or the year of his birth would suggest... that man was worn to a shadow. And sitting at the fireside, still swathed in his heavy greatcoat, as he bowed his head further he seemed to age and wither all the more.

"Cosette arranged that I should have a room at their house, that I should live there as her father still even though I had told her that Faulchlevant – the old gardener at the Convent..."

"The man beneath the cart," Javert interrupted, showing his memory for such detail was sharp as any policeman's should be.

He nodded. "Yes. I had said he was her father – it is not important. I had my chance at such a life myself when I was young – I wasted and ruined it," he said wretchedly. "If I stayed there would always be the risk that my life might stain hers – I couldn't bear for that to happen."

Again those two scars of displeasure deepened upon the Inspector's brow. "Did you not rustle up a shining clean but equally tragic past for yourself when you were scripting one for the Mademoiselle?"

"No." There was such hopelessness in that one short denial that it was unassailable.

Javert bided a moment in silence, looking at his wine cup upon the table. He was a man who despised drunkenness – in himself above all things – but on this night it held a tempting lustre it had previously always lacked. He grimaced but made no move to take up his wine. "So you just left?"

Valjean shook his head at his own folly. "I wasn't strong enough for that... Although I wish to God I had been. I asked permission to visit Cosette and the Baron was good enough to grant it. I called upon her in the early evenings..." In his mind's eye Valjean saw once more the damp, vaulted room with its terracotta tiles upon the floor and pealing ochre paint upon the walls. A mean room meant more for the storage of wine and cold meats than the receiving of visitors; decorated not with charming pictures and velvet curtains but with whorls of dust and the delicate lace of spider's webs. "I..." he faltered. To speak on the lowliness of the surroundings would be to cause Javert to question why his doting daughter and indifferently beneficent son in law had suffered him to be there and not in the drawing room with its plush rugs, wide hearth and welcoming chaises. "I did not intrude. I addressed Cosette with all formality and bid her do likewise."

Javert's head had canted to the right and his eyes narrowed – in both cases by the scarcest of measurements. But it was an attitude that we might interpret as _'you would sell me this bagatelle, but what details are you skimming over?'._ A look which Valjean, in his abject misery, did not see.

"I made my appointments briefer by degrees. Then – then some evenings I did not call at all. Days slipped past and I stayed away. She never sent word enquiring as to my absence." His voice had grown quieter as he spoke, and the last of what he said was little more than a whisper: "She did not even notice."


	3. Chapter 3

Javert felt something cold twist in his gut like a blade of ice. It was both an unpleasant and uncommon sensation for him: but he knew full well what it was. It was pity. Pity: a fellow feeling of hurt on behalf of a man who'd plainly bled for the good of another, only to have his act of sacrifice unwitnessed, and unacknowledged.

Valjean made an effort to recover himself; he drank a little wine and sought to imbue his voice with an insouciance he did not feel. He managed at most a splintered optimism. "Why should she notice? She is young, busy, the joys of the world are hers and her heart is with the boy. It is as it should be. I don't deserve to impinge upon their joy and try to take it for my own. It is theirs to treasure."

It is interesting for us to note – and it was a thought that crossed the Inspector's mind – how different men are in their despair. Whilst Javert had snapped and snarled at the pit of misery he found himself in, fighting equally against his own destruction or salvation, against what had bound him and what might free him; Valjean's battle had a very different mode. He was set in his despair and sat silent and immovable like a stone. Not because he did not wish to be freed from it, but because he was unable to allow himself to be moved. In a way that Javert never had, he accepted his ruin as something that was fitting. It was lucky then, that the Inspector was not a man to shirk a challenge.

_"Pardieu_, all you've done! You're like a weapon-smith who sees his own mark upon the blade and is content," Javert complained, "for all that it is entrenched in his own stomach!" It will not surprise us to learn that the Inspector was distempered by the pity he had experienced, all the more so because he was sure if Valjean had not been such an idiot then the ex-convict would not have suffered so - and he, Javert, would not have shared his pain by proxy. He took a mouthful of wine as if it might numb the lingering traces of pity's bite in his gut. It did not; he scowled and briefly toyed with the thought of draining his cup before discarding it. "So like many men before you," Javert speculated, his voice unnecessarily brisk, "you cast your anchor to an island you hoped was paradise but it turned out to be a leviathan and now you are sunk." It was not how Valjean would have ever thought to describe it, but that made it none the less true in its way. "You should have come to me before."

"And you would have told me my anchorage was false?"

"Undoubtedly," he snapped. And then, "But I might..." he muttered.

The words _'have offered you a safe harbour'_ were unspoken, but Valjean sensed their shape and weight and did not need them voiced to hear them.

"Valjean, you of all people should know things change. Nothing lasts. Treating anything as infallible is reckless. You told me you'd read Voltaire," he groused. "Not everything is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds." A narrow and self deprecating smile. "I once held Law in such high esteem and look where that got me. And the law changes far less than the life and affections of a young lady." It did not please him that Valjean appeared so ruined still. He pinched at the bridge of his nose in vexation. "Neither of you are dead and no great hurt appears to have been done. There is both time and the chance of reconciliation should you wish it."

"You believe that?"

"More to the point I should like to know you believe it. After all," he said lightly, "I learnt my lesson of hope from you. Eat," he commanded with a wave of his hand. "Or drink. Or speak sense – it's all the same to me," he said in a voice that managed to convey that it was indeed all the same to him: for he found each equally important and would suffer the man before him to do all three before the night was done. "Honestly Valjean," he complained. "You spend hours preaching to me the art of self-forgiveness and divine mercy – and yet in your own boots you do something as nonsensical as this?"

"I couldn't risk the taint to her name," he argued hopelessly. "Should I be found out she would be heart-broken and her husband's family dishonoured – I..."

A raised eyebrow, as much of a challenge as the drawing of a blade from its scabbard. "Did you ignore the part of my missive where I wished you well in your life and obliquely reiterated, in case you were in any doubt, that I would not continue to pursue you?"

Valjean looked at the wine cup in his hands. "There are other policeman."

Javert gave a curious snort, one which agreed there may well be but that in this instance, though he might say so himself, he was the only one worth bothering with. "You could have asked me."

"To falsify reports?"

"No! _Conasse." _He raised his eyes briefly heavenward, perhaps entreating God for a miraculous increase in Valjean's intelligence, or perhaps hoping a beam might fall from the ceiling and put one of them out of the other's misery. "If you were so concerned you could have asked me to check that the status of your case was as dead and buried as you are meant to be – such a thing is easily done. For one so enmeshed in the workings of law and criminality I would have thought you understood!" The smallest of pauses and when next he spoke he strove to explain without condescension. "At the Préfecture, things must be dealt with in the correct order of importance. If a case is old and its solution not immediately pressing then it is filed away or, should an officer express interest, it is assigned to that officer to investigate as he sees fit. Before I left Paris I gave a final report on all I had been working on. In reference to the convict 24601 I wrote that the trail was dead and that I saw no merit in its further investigation." A curiously empty smile directed at his own history. "I believe the Préfecture as a whole breathed a sigh of relief that my report for once was 'reasonable' and did not demand time and effort be wasted on what they considered trifles. Gisquet could not fault me – never could - but he always had this tense look about the eyes as if he feared one day my zealotry would get the better of me." A sardonic twitch of the mouth, "Or him…" He waved his cup in irritation, altering the course of his words, steering back to the matter at hand. "These venialia of yours..."

"What?"

He stilled and bequeathed upon his guest a long look. "And you were the one who spent years in a convent! Venialia: petty sins. Oh don't look so befuddled!" he complained. "I said I didn't pay a mind to your loving God, I never said someone hadn't tried to force me to. The prison in which I was born and loitered in during my infancy had a surfeit of priests – not," he added wryly, "all on the right side of the bars. But right side or wrong – _Dieu!_ – how they all preached!" Another wave of his hands as if brushing aside conversational cobwebs. "None of that is to the purpose - look - Valjean... I honestly am uncertain where to start. You had no qualms about stealing – or rather creating - a name when you ran to Paris. You had a string of names, not a single one legitimate. Some even had papers – I know, I looked – all false, lies with historical precedent at best. You say you created a genealogy for this girl, made up a dead family and a sad story so that she might walk through society without shame. In short, you sat as judge and jury upon her case, proclaimed her innocent and so rewarded her with a second chance in life. And yet for yourself, you will not extend such a mercy? You will not invent a name so that you might live the rest of your days in peace? How is it that throughout your life you have false-faced without compunction and now when the world sees fit to let you rest you suddenly have a mania for scruples above and beyond the call of duty?"

This was not an argument that in his heart Valjean wanted to win, but that did not stop him using every conversational gambit that presented itself to score his point. "Would _you_ do so? Would you lie to buy yourself peace?"

Javert's conversational fencing was quite as on-form as his skill in single-stick fighting – for many years the Loup Garou's weapon had been a lead-topped walking cane. (Even now amidst the argot of Paris a gentleman's walking stick is termed a 'claw', and that is due to the singularly fierce Inspector who could use it with such brutal efficiency.) He easily sidestepped the thrust that had looked to pierce him. "Irrelevant," he announced with conviction. "I would never have manoeuvred myself into that position and so would never be faced with the choice."

Since Valjean indeed could not imagine Javert in a similar situation he conceded and changed his failed attack into a repost. "It was a necessity, what I did for Cosette. For myself it would have been merely an indulgence."

"On the contrary," he ejurated, "given what I know of the young lady and from what I see before me, this creation of a history for her was indulgence, but for you it is necessity of the gravest kind." He snorted at Valjean's look. "You doubt me? I plainly see how you fare without it! Must I lend you a looking glass?"

"To break laws to give to another in true need is fitting," he countered, "to do so to give to oneself in luxury is wrong."

Javert's expression showed he had a lot to say on that matter but he did not find it politic to begin such an argument. "You speak to God, do you not?" he demanded abruptly. "What has he to say on the matter?

"God speaks through my conscience."

"And your conscience has lead you here to this pretty mess? Seek a different confidant," he advised shortly. And then seeing Valjean's stricken look, _"Pardon._ Offering comfort is not my forte." He sighed. After a moment, quietly he spoke again. "There once was a man whose world was turned upside down, who suffered the ruination of all he believed in and all he strove to be. You saved him. And now, it is that man's turn to aid you." A crooked smile. "It would be simpler by far if I possessed the grace you did that night. But I do not," he said bluntly. "So we must make do." A short silence blanketed the room, curling about the two men like a living thing, expectant on the Inspector's behalf, defensive on Valjean's. Javert went to the woodpile and threw a log onto the flames causing them to glower and spit before resuming his seat.

In the unfolding of fictions, whether romance or adventure, there is a certain flow to the narrative. That is because the sentences are arranged carefully in the author's mind: he fills the scene with words from his pen a line at a time and may revise anything that sits ill upon the page with a single strike. Nothing in a story happens without reason; conversations and events play out with the sort of meticulous planning on the author's behalf the like of which might be equated to a grand Duchess organising the itinerary and seating arrangements for a midsummer ball.

But in history, alas, things are rarely so neat. In such a manner I must beg your indulgence; Valjean's next comment had little harmony in common with the topic that had been under discussion; and although it had bearing on the overall theme, it was as sudden in its presentation as a wrongly struck note. Since there is no way I can smooth the passage from one spoken thought to the next I shall present it just as bluntly as Valjean did to the Inspector:

"He thinks I shot you."

"Hm?" he darted a quizzical look.

"Marius Pontmercy. He thinks I shot you."

He shifted, stretching his legs beneath the table. "This sits badly with him?"

Valjean nodded.

Javert's face took on a glacial expression the sort of which used to send his inferiors scurrying like sailors from an iceberg. "His conscience pricks him on your behalf; yet as I recall he lifted not a hand in my defence nor said a word in protest when you lead me away to be shot." His look hardened, and now one was aware not just of the emerald ice bearing down on one but the fathoms of ice hidden beneath the waves that moved also. "Besides, the teterrimous little snot is splitting hairs. He was perfectly satisfied for me to be murdered by his friends in the name of _Liberty, Fraternity, Egalité_ – that was Justice! But killed by a man in what must have been a vendetta? – No, no, how awful! _Désespéré petit salop__."_ He drained his wine and his venom also. _"Pardon._ I don't think much of your son in law."

Valjean hadn't thought overly much of Marius himself until he had accepted him as integral to Cosette's happiness. "He is young."

"What sort of excuse is that? He's still a wrong-thinking little snot." The iceberg considered melting. "Do you think he'll grow out of it?"

"I don't know," Valjean said heavily, like one without faith that the storm currently soaking them would ever end. "Did you grow out of bad habits?"

"I never had any. When very young I ensured I didn't fall into them – I knew it was all or nothing. If I was to succeed, I had to be exemplary."

"Do you still take snuff?"

Javert looked bemused to hear the inhaling of snuff classed as a bad habit. "No," he said, and there was an edge in his voice that belied the slight smile on his lips. "I lost my silver case and never bothered to replace it."

"I am sorry to hear it," he uttered.

"Why?"

Valjean started, caught out. "It was a quirk. A habit," he admitted. "It made you human."

Javert's smile grew and broke both at once. "I'd hoped that these days I was beyond the need of such props." His words held the shadow of rebuke, although who it was for was impossible to tell. His look was disarmingly astute: "Valjean," he said sternly, "there is no point showing me a cut hand to bandage when I need to be drawing out the arrow from your breast."

The flames danced in the hearth, and the tallow candle that had been set upon the table that evening guttered and died, the wick downing in the melted wax, giving way to a brief ember and then smoke. Valjean watched it, transfixed, as if it was not a mundane happening but a greater sign and one he was powerless to deny. "I told Marius," he said suddenly.

One angular eyebrow quirked up. "That I was alive?"

"That I was a convict."

He sighed. "You are remarkably select in your truths. That stupidity has earnt you another helping." His nodded at the remains of the tart. "Was there a reason for this confession?"

Valjean made no move to take up his spoon and comply. "He deserved to know."

"I find him remarkably undeserving myself, but to each his own. Let me guess. He was appalled to learn of your past."

"He said he had connections and could get me a pardon. I told him there was no need, pardons are not granted to ghosts."

"Not true," Javert contended. "They have been given in the past, but I grant they are rare, and in your case would only complicate matters. Forgive me," he said with an acid edge, "perhaps it is the lateness of the hour but I find I'm unable to grasp why you had this conversation with him at all."

Before Valjean could answer, the Inspector stood and took his thoughtful displeasure to the hearth where he once more threw logs to the flames. With adroit movements he levered each log in turn with the fire iron until they leant against each other like a house of cards, the glow of their heat facing inwards to reflect upon one another, feed and grow. For a moment the new logs smoked and the fire was subdued. He gazed at it with critical eye, as if he was counting time in his head and it had such a span to react before he harassed it further. Before his look became pointed or his patience neared its end the heart of the fire sprung forth in a great show of flames, bathing the rest of the room in a renewed splendour of light and warmth. Javert was satisfied and abandoned the poker, straightening and cuffing briskly at his knees and hands to ensure no ash clung there.

The Inspector's thoughts had not rested solely upon the hearth however; his eyes darkened by that strange alchemy of emotion and, "Ah, perhaps I see. Tsk," he chided. "You have quite the capacity for martyrdom." He caught Valjean's eye. "And as if that weren't bad enough, I cannot approve of your choice of beneficiary."

"Cosette has been my life!" he protested. "I swore to Fantine that I would care for her – I thought it a duty but it proved a joy and..."

"No! _Con! __On t'a bercé trop près du mur?_ You are slow tonight. Not the girl - no doubt she has her share of innocence and charm," he said. His voice lacked conviction and warned the point was unproven; although he was willing to let it lie because whilst he had encountered many young ladies who were far from charming and about as innocent as original sin, there were few closeted bourgeois who'd shown the imagination or inclination to get up to much beyond occasional petty gossip. "The little revolutionary. The Baron," he amended with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "It seems to me he has benefited both from the adoration of an accomplished young lady and a hundred times from your self-sacrifice." A slight scowl at the table before him and the mess of tallow that no longer cast its light upon his empty cup. Hesitation; then he reached to pour himself a second draft of wine. "I've not seen nor heard a single instance of the past, nor facet of his character that warrants such gifts."

Valjean had, as we may recall, been profoundly influenced by the Bishop Myriel's act of charity all those years ago, but he had never stopped to question as Javert did now how deeply and indiscriminately his disposition towards charity ran. "He is just a boy; why shouldn't he have happiness?"

Javert tried and failed to resist the temptation to roll his eyes. _"__C'est foutu__bordel__._ Given his actions at the barricades I'm inclined to think this 'boy' is either stupid or mentally abnormal." He ploughed on across Valjean's faltering protests. "What has been his crowning achievement in life so far? Winning respite in an uprising by threatening to torch a powder keg and blow himself, the barricade and all his friends to hell just to spite the Guard. That's not normal."

Since Marius had become the aleph of Cosette's heart, Valjean had stopped seeing him as an individual and seen him more as an accessory to Cosette – marriage had just verified the thought into holy law: two flesh made one. Cosette was a celestial sphere in heaven, and Marius the rings that encircled her. To this way of thinking, to fault Marius was to fault Cosette - and that he could not do. "Some would say it was courageous."

Javert snorted. "I'd say it was incompetence on the Guard's behalf – I should not have backed down. One of his friends would have stopped him if he really looked to do it. They wanted to be martyrs to a revolution – not schoolboys whose certificates are signed off as _'death by misadventure'_ – their sort have their pride after all..."

"Do you mean that?" he asked, quite horrified at the imagining in his head of Javert laughing at Marius as he had once laughed at a pistol held by one of the Patron-Minette. Only instead of a miss-fire, flame met powder and the boy, the barricade, the Inspector and half of a Paris street was blown sky high...

"Since I still have an inconveniently unshakable aversion to lying, yes."

Valjean raised his wine cup and drained it, hoping that would make him feel better. It did not. He placed it upon the table and nudged it towards Javert.

The Inspector poured him a new measure and kept whatever thoughts were in his head strictly to himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Valjean drunk another mouthful; he was still disquieted but now he was curious and dizzy too, holding onto the world by his fingernails as it labascated. "If you will not lie, how did you manage in Paris? How did you get accepted at the barricade in the first place?"

He grinned, a sly stretching of thin lips. "One can get a very long way by letting people believe what they will and never contradicting them. For example, I arrive at the barricade at a trot, they say _'halt!'_ and _'who are you?'_. I brace myself against the musket I'm carrying as if out of breath and tell them I've just run from the Rue des Billets and that the Guard is massing along the Rue Rambuteau. This distracts them. They see the musket and naturally ask, _'will you fight with us?'_ I salute and sing out _'Vive la France!'_ and I'm in."

Valjean was discomforted anew, although he couldn't say why. It was perhaps being shown just how devious and underhand Javert could be whilst at the same time remaining scrupulously honest. "Isn't that worse than lying?" he asked.

"No," Javert said coldly.

"Why do you hate it so much?"

"It is the lowest form of theft, the most petty and duplicitous act a person is capable of and it does the most damage." His eyes were flint-hard and of the same hue; in his look and manner Valjean glimpsed the Javert of old. "People lie all day, everyday, and think nothing of it." His look was hostile; it was clear that he had no wish to explain himself further, but at length he sighed and said: "My mother made her living from lies. Not so bad, one would think, she was neither the first nor the last to do so. She read fortunes, sold trinkets, promised miracles. But lies were not only her means of bread and butter but her very breath. To my knowledge the only true thing she ever told me was my name." He stared piercingly at Valjean. "Have you ever tried to relate to someone who doesn't know what truth _is?_ It's not possible, there is no common ground – no ground at all when they insist the grass is blue, the sky is green and you are a fool not to believe them. And unlike her, I saw what her lies wrought – the corrosive damage she left in her wake. The woman might as well have vomited vitriol every time she opened her mouth for the harm she caused." His hatred bled away leaving something quieter and more resigned in its wake; the wound that made him growl so was a very old one after all. "That, I think, is the worst thing about lies. The one who speaks them rarely sees the harm they do."

Valjean knew in his heart it was folly to speak, but the words were already on his tongue. "You're such a staunch defender of the truth and yet you berate me for my choice? For refusing to steal a name?"

He sighed and offered a sorry smile, no longer the fanatic, once more the man who had washed away the lesser part of himself in the Seine. "Valjean," he said gently, "stories are lies too and yet you do not see me railing against children's faerytales and cradle rhymes. Sometimes," he allowed, "lies do not harm anyone because there is no one for them to harm. You have borrowed and created names for yourself for decades. Whilst in principal I do not approve, I have seen the good you have done with them. The one time your lies could have harmed a man – Champmathieu - you discarded everything to take the blame." His voice held the suggestion of admiration. It was not an emotion he had felt at the time; he had been angered by the convict's duplicity as he saw it and triumphant too at having his prey in his jaws at last. But, after the events of June 6th, Javert had looked back over much he had thought he knew and re-evaluated it. (This, whilst sounding a logical course to us must not be undervalued: few have the courage to admit they are wrong, fewer still think well of the one who showed them their mistake.) "Besides," he shot as a parting salvo, "legally you are dead. Should you jump into a grave to prove the reports true?"

Valjean shook his head, not an agreement nor a denial, a confusion of thoughts and feelings that still boiled within him. Pity the man whose heart and conscience is at war and can hear the voice of God in each. God teaches us that love is the greatest gift we can bestow upon one another. Teaches also that falsehood and stealing is wrong. How then should Valjean proceed when the love he sought both to bestow and claim could be achieved only through a lie?

We, for whom this drama is presented and who can see all the past and present of the matter laid out in ink sloping across a page can perceive the solution; but Valjean, soul-sick and mired in the centre of it could find no way out. It is fortunate for him that he had (some might say through chance but I would call it instinct) reached out to one who had experience of such dilemmas and whose mind had as much of the wolf as it had of the man, and by such reasoning could track through the depths of the mire as easily as he tracked a felon through the streets of a city when he had the scent.

The only uncertainty presented to us is not whether Javert knew the solution, but whether Valjean would follow and accept it once it was presented to him. In that, we are both as ignorant and hopeful as the Inspector.

"I am sorry," Javert said unexpectedly, and nothing in either look nor tone gave clue to the cause of his regret.

"For what?"

"That you had to travel so far to speak to a friend. You deserve better."

Valjean felt overcome to hear the acknowledgement so freely spoken and in that moment regretted keenly not having made the journey before. "I should have come earlier," he said quietly.

"You should," Javert agreed. "You have consigned yourself to the rest of the tart au pomme many times over. However, if you stay for a measure of days I shall overlook the matter." It was likely that as he spoke in keleusmatic tones, the Inspector had a clear grasp of how many days 'a measure' entailed, but it was a fact obfuscated both to us and his guest.

The other man remained for a moment in silent consideration. At last he said carefully, "I shall presume upon your hospitality for a day or so, thank you." In this he was attempting to be crafty and just as oblique as his host, although in the arguing of minutia he knew full well Javert was the better lawyer so the attempt was likely wasted. A part of Valjean recognised what foolishness it was to be bickering over who ate the last of the pastry, or to be challenging one another on points they would gladly concede anyway. It was just their way, arguing, sparing, berating each other; Valjean did not imagine they'd manage well at any other form of conversation.

The Inspector smiled. "You have earnt yourself a reprieve," he said graciously. "And a question, should you wish it."

There was a pause, although Javert was in no doubt Valjean's brief silence was not from lack of a question, more that he was sorting through his store. He was not wrong.

"You accepted it?" Valjean asked softly, looking at the grain within the wood of the tabletop.

One brow tilted elegantly in laconic query. "Accepted...?"

"The brioche, from the bakery."

Javert laughed, something he had done little of in his life and it had usually boded ill for someone when he had. This time, although those in Paris and Toulon would never credit it, the sound held only a rich vein of humour. After some moments, he stifled the last of it against the back of his hand and composed his face to seriousness, although the light in his eyes still danced as quick as mercury. "Yes. Yes I did. You want to know why?"

This was not a rare exercise in rhetoric from the Inspector, it was instead a quiet jibe, correcting the question he had been asked; Valjean nodded anyway.

He sighed and a little of his levity was leeched away. "Monsieur Belleau is a man with a temper. And when he feels frustrated or thwarted – which is, to his petty thinking – often, he takes the surfeit out upon his wife. That is why Madame is frequently miserable. Neither of these facts are well known in the town as Madame is not struck where it is easily perceived. But just as I do not need to see a robbery to know it has occurred, I do not need to see broken skin to know the bruises are there." His fingers had clenched slightly around his cup; he took a swallow of wine and bid his hand relax.

"I had words with Monsieur Belleau and left him in no doubt that if he continued to behave like the lowest Parisian gutter-scum I would take a certain pleasure in treating him as such. I threatened to..." A slight scowl of consideration. "In truth I never got down to cases; I couldn't think of anything suitably dire without lying so I rather left the promise of my and the Law's action unspecified. He was under no misapprehension however it would go very badly for him. Madame did not say, but I believe the brioche were for the two times since when her husband would have struck her but thought better of it."

Any other man would have embroidered their telling, returning to their own heroics, or to reiterate the foulness of the villain or the virtue of the woman. Javert, as has been mentioned, was cut from less common cloth. His thoughts this night were not for the troubles of the town he had fixed, but for those of his guest which he had not. A lighting of his eyes in apologetic amusement and, "I think, by the by, you are still skirting the matter."

Ah, the veteratorian habits of a policeman are hard to break! In such interrogations timing and the application of pressure is all, as Javert well knew. And if it was Just to use such ways to capture the sinful of society, surely more Just to use them to free a man who had bound himself unnecessarily.

It may appear that this night Javert's role of both Prosecutor and Defence in Valjean's case, not to mention implacable Judge and righteous Jury seems a grotesque act of self-elevation. It is not so; do not think the Inspector obnoxious nor believe him the man he was before. He was in a unique position having been broken, healed, zealous and humane, as well as knowing the history of the case. He was not seeking to be an avatar of the statutes, but rather a servant of humanity. That curious area rarely achieved but worthily striven for: the fog-grey spectrum between God's forgiveness and Man's Law – a true balance of Justice and Mercy. Although he paid no thought to it in the least, this night Javert was the very best of all he had ever hoped to be.

Valjean felt his skin prickle and looked at the Inspector like the mouse that feels the hawk's shadow fall. "Skirting the matter? Why do you say so?"

"You must be. You are just as miserable as when you first arrived, although thank God you look a little less likely to drop dead." His queue needed retying and as he shook his head a lock or two of pewter hair slipped free of the black ribbon that had bound it; he reached up a hand to hook them behind his ear. (That this action held more in common with habit than irritation tells us in its own unique way how the Inspector had changed; his tunic was still close-buttoned, but he a little less so.)

The Inspector was not, you may be interested to know, troubled by the circular and meandering nature of their discussion; he knew as any policeman might that the road to the truth was like the coils of a labyrinth; it seemed to turn to no purpose but it lead inexorably ever inwards, ever closer to the heart of the matter.

Javert's mouth twisted, like a man who was silently chewing on a thought, ruminating on what ought be swallowed to silence and what spat out. His hand reached forth to toy with his wine cup, and again irrationally he wished he had a quart of good Bordeaux in his stomach.

His words, when he voiced them were done so carefully, like a man traversing a quagmire. "They say, that pride comes before a fall." A brief and awkward smile. "I have not found it to be so. You see, in my experience, pride – if one has it – comes before everything." A second smile, no less off-kilter than the first. He seemed to have stalled. "Valjean..." He gave up, reached for the bottle and poured the wine into his cup with a wry look that might have been apology, knocked back a mouthful and seemed to order his thoughts. "We are told that pride is a sin. I'm no theologian to argue against holy writ. I'm sure they're right," he muttered without conviction. "But for my part – in my experience – a man is not a man, no creature is _anything_ without pride." An expansive wave of his hand. "The stag that is run to ground. If it cowers before the hounds it is nothing but venison in the making. But a stag that holds its head high is majestic – a creature worthy of respect and honour even in defeat. It is every inch the stag even unto its dying breath. Men are no different. You have walked through many tiers of life – have you not noticed? There are those who refuse to surrender their pride, surrender themselves, whatever their situation. And others..." A grimace and dismissive gesture. "Thénardier - you encountered him. Give him the upper hand and he preens and threatens. Lay him low and he whines and wriggles. He has no pride in himself – he is not a man – he's a walking maggot!"

A pause then as Javert steeled himself to make an admission. "The ja-" he corrected himself. "The woman in Montreuil sur Mer. Fantine. She was the most wretched of creatures; filthy, brandy soaked and defiled. And yet," he admitted quietly, "she had her pride still." Even more quietly, "And I am sorry I sought to strip her of it." He looked up to meet Valjean's surprised gaze. "That is not a fault I can correct. If I have a soul – and such a thing I believe is still in contention – then it is forever marred by the incident." He gave a hollow laugh. "See – I have come full circle. I eschewed the fortune teller's ideas of fate and the Church's thoughts on divine plans only to buy into the Enlightenment's doctrine of inescapable natural order. That in its time proved as false as the other two philosophies. So at last here I am, certain of nothing more than that one's every single action counts for good or ill and that both must be weighed in judgement." A scowl directed at the tabletop. "That is not a circle. Likely not even a figure of eight. My geometry is worse than I thought," he muttered.

Valjean smiled, a brief flicker of humour.

"When I was in Paris, there were lectures given about Napoleon's finds in Egypt. There was a stone – the Roast-Beefs have it now – that helped unlock an old language. The Préfect attended various galas and dinners as part and parcel of his post – upon occasion he invited officers to attend him." He grinned. "Gisquet was very keen that officers should better themselves whilst being equally keen they not waste time. One could never be entirely certain what new discover fell into which category..." He stopped, feeling perhaps his words were disloyal to his old commander. "It is of no matter. I attended one of those evenings. There was a talk given by two Professors about the practices and beliefs of Egypt, holy stories they'd translated from text hewn on stone and scribed in funery sacraments. They were a heathen lot," he said without concern, "and had a multitude of monsters and spirits they worshiped. Most of them had animal heads," he added with a shrug as if to underline their foolishness. "The lecture did not hold my attention over much, I fear my mind was on more practical matters; I had reports to write and felons to catch – talks on pagan gods whilst sipping glasses of sherry in upper-class company did not seem worth my while." He turned the wine cup around in his fingers, like someone fidgeting before they admit their mistake. "There was one thing I remember however." Abruptly he placed his cup upon the table. "One of their desert gods was a spirit of justice. It was a woman who kept a set of scales and a leaf that symbolised truth: every man's heart was weighed against that sprig of veracity in her scales."

Valjean found himself thinking that this ancient precursor to Justice was a perfect patron saint for Javert. An unimpeachable spirit who did not trouble herself with the question of whether man had a soul or not but instead weighed his heart: that secret seat of all loves, regrets and desires, and judged him from that. What better guide for a man who had followed the cause of Enlightenment and then belatedly discovered a curious spirituality? Not, he admitted to himself, that Javert required such a patron saint. Then again, his heritage owed much to the gypsies and they were well known for their strange ways... He was halfway to smiling at such sweeping prejudice when a second notion occurred to him.

"The words, they're similar," Valjean said. He spoke in a mumble; a man who was articulating thoughts despite the dark well of circumstance he found himself stuck in. And from this we should take note: there are some men who will, no matter how lofty or low their circumstance, have the purity of character to voice such thoughts when they occurred. Such a man was Valjean.

Javert's brow furrowed, the twin lines of stress deepening above his eyebrows before enlightenment came. "Oh – you mean 'Egyptian' and 'gypsy'?" A brief snort, which had it been any other company likely would have been a glare and a sharp reprimand. But where there is shared history, strife and calamity there is also comradery. "Yes, yes the academics mentioned that too. My mother's people are considered to come from Egypt originally, hence the etymology of the name." He shrugged his shoulders, not the broad Gaelic shrug of his countrymen when contemplating the complexities of the universe, but a brief twitching roll of the shoulders, finished even as it was begun – a mannerism that was entirely his own and more acrasial by far. "What of it?"

Valjean said nothing, for what was there to add? 'Despite the fact that Ma'at is a tutelary spirit at best, a phantasm at worst, and you are a rationalist, I feel you ought to adopt her as your celestial god and guide because she seems to compliment you so completely'? No – that would not do. Besides, not only did it open up the question of whether such lesser godlings existed, but... "Do we choose God, or does God choose us?"

Javert felt himself both entirely too sober and in no way inebriated enough for that sort of discussion. Such questions should be calmly debated by priests or hotly debated by drunken students. He was supremely ill placed for either. "I pay no attention to God and it would be an act of hypocrisy – hubris perhaps – to suppose he paid attention to..."

"Perhaps? Hubris _perhaps?"_

Javert's pleasure in the fact Valjean was debating against him was quite the equal to his need to retaliate: "If there is a God, and I belittle him whilst aggrandising my own worth – that, in accord with the Classics - is hubris."

"Hubris is an old word for excessive pride," Valjean cut across.

"Yes. But from the few and tragic works of Antiquity I have actually read – and," he admitted easily, "There were a lot of them in the volume and many of them were dull; my scholarship is patchy at best, I admit. Even so. Pride in itself was never enough. Pride that affronted a deity, that was hubris." Another shrug, this time less brief and more Gaelic. "If there is no god, there is no hubris."

"There is a God," Valjean asserted.

"Perhaps," he said in a tone that suggested false concession, although his eyes were bright with mischief. "Perhaps," he repeated, "you might speak to the abbé here. His name is Bonnaire. He is a very earnest old man – skinny and spry as a mountain goat, cantankerous and ancient as a hermit. He has threatened to box my ears. I rather like him. You could conspire together to save my soul."

Valjean's eyes rose and a troubled expression surfaced with them. "Does your soul need to be saved?"

Eyebrows buckled. "Undoubtedly. But of the two of us, I feel the more pressing issue is saving your hide."

"My hide is not a matter for concern," he muttered.

Javert's smile was stretched wide with insincerity. "You're right – your hands have stopped shaking – you must be cured!" He raised his cup in salute and drank, hoping to hide his sour look. "It's a miracle," he muttered, "I'm a convert. The abbé will be pleased."

The other man looked wounded. "That's unworthy of you."


	5. Chapter 5

The Inspector's head bowed in acknowledgement and some of his hair fell forward of his shoulders, masking him in steely shadows. _"Pardon."_ He sighed, although he neither raised his head nor relinquished his hold on the beaker. "You are the one who prompted me to take a more a humane approach. But such an attitude means I risk an emotional involvement, and it is that involvement that lends me a vicious tongue." His head tilted, allowing him to regard Valjean balefully. "I refuse to be party or even witness to your pointless self destruction."

"Is self destruction only a privilege granted to members of the Paris constabulary?" Valjean demanded.

Grey eyes sheened with potential lightning and his words were quiet and strained as gathering thunder. "You take me for a hypocrite. An accusation I resent – I had thought you knew me better. When I sought death I was caught between the very devil and the deep blue sea, I had a choice between corrupting my life's work and corrupting my own integrity. Unwilling to choose and live with the shame either way, instead I meant to end my life. Your case is not the same. You have chosen for yourself the path of the martyr. You believe your choice lies between the ruination of your life or your character." The lightning struck. _"__C'est des conneries__._ You painted yourself into a corner and decimated your own character. Despite your machinations, your daughter would welcome you with open arms. As for the revolutionary, if you tell him the true events of the barricade at Rue St Denis – honour if nothing else will demand he receive you. The infuriating little snot _has_ honour, yes? If he does not I may seek retribution..."

"He is an honourable man."

_"Boy."_

"That too."

"Good," he commented with hollow conviction. "This doesn't exonerate him from my bad opinion but it does prove my point. Your situation is not untenable. You can fight against it, you can better it – death is not your only available option."

"I told you, I have no intention of..."

"And I told you," he growled, "you are lying to yourself – the most grievous of all falsehoods. Look at you! Huddled by my hearth in your greatcoat – close enough to roast yet you've the bowed shoulders of one who can't get warm! I've seen corpses with a better blush of health and your eyes have all the life of a muddy puddle. You have been killing yourself these past weeks. The fact you chose not to lodge a bullet in your brain or jump off the nearest bridge is only because you're unable to admit to yourself that is what you're doing. Which makes you not only an idiot, but," he smiled pointedly, "an _unbelievable idiot."_

Valjean felt stung; not only were the Inspector's words insulting, but they had the harsh bite of truth coupled with a lack of surprise, as if Javert had foreseen this happenstance all along. He rubbed at his brow tiredly. "You sound satisfied. Have I now fulfilled your expectations?"

"Expectations lead to disappointment, I discarded both back in Paris. But I have waited a year to tar you with the insult, I'll admit. Little did I know quite how apposite you would make it." He made a dismissive, restless gesture, further words and rebukes on his tongue; but after a moment he stilled and settled once more into silence. His gaze dropped below the tabletop, sinking past the length of his legs, his boot heels and down at last into the indigo and cerulean patterns of the carpet. He let his eyes trace the patterns of its weave and his mind to calm. "It is most unsporting of the everlasting Almighty to fix his canon 'gainst self slaughter," he commented wryly at length.

Valjean regarded him strangely. "Would you let me?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

For many the question would have been too oblique, but Javert was able to follow the thread with the same ease as he followed the pattern in the Tibetan weaving. The Inspector drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "If I felt it was your only recourse, yes." He looked up and gave a low, unhappy chuckle. "Your expression is quite the picture, Valjean. As usual your single question is a scattering of different questions huddling together like birds in a nest. A sorry _précis_. You're asking me if I would allow you to break the law. You are asking me whether I believe in God. You're asking me if I think your situation is hopeless, or if I should care if you are gone. You're asking me whether your life matters – to me, to the world - and there's a further wealth of thoughts lurking in your face which you are too weary to tidy out of sight... Well?" Eyebrows snapped upwards like broken twigs. "Am I wrong?"

Dumbly, Valjean shook his head, uncertain whether to find comfort or horror in such an astute appraisal of his thoughts. It seemed the Inspector had no need of Ma'at, he had his own scales and weighed men's hearts in a single, silvered look.

Javert sighed like a man who has made more work for himself through mule-headedness. "The Law, alas, is not absolute. I learnt that last year – a short lesson and a harsh one." He gave an empty crooked smile; he did not wish to return to his previous zealotry, but he could not deny his life had been simpler - his choices the easy difference between black and white. "The Penal Code counts suicide as murder." A slow blink. "I disagree."

Those two words were spoken with a simple gravitas and with no more fuss than if the question had been 'Are there three wine cups upon the table?' and he had answered, 'No. There are two'. And this, if irrefutable proof of Javert's profound re-setting of his moral compass was ever needed, must surely be it.

"If a man punches himself in the face, do I arrest him for causing harm to a citizen? I do not. The constabulary and the law in this case recognise that man on the whole is prone to bouts of idiocy and so long as he disturbs no other, he is welcome to it. Suicide is counted unlawful for no other reason than God has set against it. Apparently the Almighty does not care for his gift of life to be wasted." He gave a snort, a harsh sound brimful of contempt. _"__Je m'en fou._ People waste it all the time. The dissatisfied and indolent drink themselves to an early grave, gambling and whoring as they do so, jaded beyond saving within a few years and numb to everything ever after. Surely the fact that they remain on this earth to add misery to everyone else's life is more waste than one sorry creature that quietly slits its own throat? Besides; a soldier may murder a man in battle – if we must speak of _holy sin_, surely the soldier's is greater than the suicide's?" A second smile, a little wider but just as empty as the first. "I've never said such things to the abbé - he's angry enough I pay no heed to God – were I to voice such thoughts he'd likely fall down in a fit of apoplexy – and I like him too much to cause such trouble." He looked at his wine cup, scowled, drank, and wondered if the ruckus in his mind was caused by the vineyard's produce, by Valjean - or whether perhaps it had always been there, and he just chose not to listen to it.

"Even animals have the right to chose their own death," Javert concluded, "why should man be any different? There. That deals with the first two at least. As for the rest... Damn you, Valjean, I wish you'd give it up. In your heart you don't seek death, I know so and you have told me so, so let us not start that argument, it's nothing but shadow boxing. I'm not a student who delights when wine and rhetoric flow in equal measure and to no purpose – I'm too old for such games."

Here I believe we are at liberty to disagree with Javert's assessment. Whilst is was true he would never delight in spending his days arguing how to set the world to rights as Les Amis de l'ABC did (and he did not agree with their plan of action either) that did not mean he was as adverse to conversation and philosophy as he suggested. In the unfolding of this tale we are privy to information the Inspector had yet to discover: in a world comprised of shades of grey, discussing philosophy with one whose opinion you trust is the surest way of grounding oneself and ensuring one's honour and judgement remains sound.

"You seek exile. You're – you're like a ship that has spent years in defence of a harbour town and then in a fit of insanity blows up every jetty with cannon, jettisons its anchor and holes its own hull before letting the winds drive it out to sea, leaving the folk of the town mystified."

Blank eyes challenged him like a soldier wearily shouldering sword and shield once more. "You are wrong."

"Oh?"

"The good folk of the town were not mystified." He spoke like a corpse given voice. "They didn't even notice."

He refused to countenance a shred of self-pity, even though he did not begrudge it. "I'm willing to bet you a _louis_ they did. One snot-nosed young man would likely have smiled. I grant you, the one you wished to witness your sacrifices did not, but that's your own fault too. So. Do you now seek to ruin yourself in a fit of pique like some malcontent in a penny-opera?"

Some small spark of life showed in the depth of his eyes. "Is that what you think? That I have acted selfishly? That I..."

He shook his head. "No Valjean," he said softly. "I think you have acted with infinite nobility. I think you did what you did because you felt it was right. It was also - _confoundedly_ stupid. You give this girl a husband and a new life whilst telling her 'I am no one' and 'I am nothing to you'." He looked pained by the world. "People are not very _bright_, Valjean. They have the most terrible habit of taking everything at face value and of being easily distracted. There is little point wailing and gnashing your teeth over it – especially when it's what you were counting on in the first place." The Inspector sighed, a brief huff of vexation, and shifted, sitting straighter in his chair. His gaze trawled the table as if seeking inspiration.

After some moments he abandoned his wine cup, picked up his spoon and gestured with it to the ruins of the tart that sat still amidst pastry crumbs on the plate. He carved out a modest mouthful for himself and ate it. "Will you have a little more?" His voice was light, but his eyes skittered beneath the safety of lowered lids to give Valjean a sideways look such as a wolf might give the hunter caught by his own trap.

There are some people – actors and politicians chiefly among them - who are masters of the art of saying one thing and meaning entirely another. The Inspector's words were an invitation, but his meaning was more like a court summons demanding the prosecuted appear or pay the price.

Valjean's throat was too dry and his stomach too tight to admit further sugared crumbs that lay like stones in his belly.

Javert saw that for now the game had played its part: the story had been told, debate been had, it was time to move towards the _coup de grace_. He rested both elbows upon the table and leant towards his guest. "There is in this matter, Valjean, what you want, and what you need. As is often the case there is a difference between the two - for those who see with a practiced eye. You claim to want reconciliation – with Cosette, with Marius, with your past. But what you need and indeed what you seek is _absolution_. I could give you absolution," he shrugged. "I'm no priest. Cleric - like Traitor - is a vocation one is called and not born to and I've never had the inclination towards either."

Let us mark for a moment the truth of those words. Have you ever stopped to wonder why those who betray do so with such fervour? It is because they are artists in their field, doing their work wholeheartedly because they in turn feel betrayed. (Do not, I beg you, confuse a mercenary for a traitor. Any man who can be bought in such a manner never had any deeper belief than in cold coin.) With that addressed, let us return once more to the two men sitting by the fireside and the theoretical proposition Javert had just offered.

"You came to unburden yourself here when you could have found a readier ear at that little church not three streets away from your home - Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux, wasn't it? Light a candle, an hour of 'Hail Mary' and all is forgiven. Obviously a priest will not do; you seek not the Church's judgement, but mine. I've heard your tale, and say again I could give absolution in the batting of an eye." One corner of his mouth twitched into a rueful smile. "But what is the use, if you will not forgive yourself?" He reached out and took his cup in hand, turning it in his grasp as if the memory was something to be unwound from himself and drowned in wine. "I know wherefore I speak. A year ago, that night, you forgave me. But in the early morning when I left your house I walked again to the Pont au Change; stood looking at the river once more, and thought about throwing myself in – finishing what I had begun so inexpertly hours before." His voice was wry, and from this we may surmise he thought his bid at self destruction not so inexpert after all – it had been thoroughly done – had the will of God not been against him.

"I didn't know..."

"It's not important," he waved his hand still clasping the beaker and took a swift swallow of wine, "stop looking so horrified. I stared at the water and I made my peace. You need to do likewise." He planned then to say _'Oh very well, I prove my point - I absolve you – does that make you happy? No!'_ but Valjean's look stopped him for the pitiable depth of hope and fear it contained. He stared at the man before him in silence, put down the beaker and stood as if uncomfortable with the juncture he had brought their conversation to. Then swiftly in two long strides he had circumnavigated the table, grasped Valjean's hand and, _"I absolve you,"_ he said seriously.

Tears came to Valjean's eyes and some instinct warned Javert that the man had finally acknowledged the truth weighing down upon his back and that in the coming instances, that back might accept or be broken by the curious mix of past sin and present grace it was forced to bear. For when the two are mixed they can each be as equally heavy, and a man might buckle unable to accept that he is good just as easily as being unable to accept he is bad.

(It is not necessarily the direction of the principled compass' arrow that wounds us, but the degrees by which it differs from the course we believed it held. Though it might seem ridiculous to us, Valjean had for so long honestly viewed himself as a sinner seeking - and yet unworthy of – redemption, that to be told and shown he had redeemed himself already was a shock he could barely comprehend.)

Javert, with his wolf's instinct and his too intimate knowledge of what is meant to have a broken or shuttered soul, stepped behind the chair, his hands resting lightly by the collar of Valjean's coat. He stooped his shoulders, bending down, and, being tall it was a slow manoeuvre such as might be made by an exceptionally lofty willow. "You're an idiot," he told the crown of Valjean's head, "but that is well known." A further bowing of his stature so that, as if in defeat, his forehead leant briefly, imperceptibly, against the back of Valjean's skull. "The question now is what you do about it."

The man in his grasp curled forward, there was a shiver across his back as silently he began to weep.

Javert's eyes widened and the grey of each iris held a frantic edge. This was far beyond his sphere. With no idea of what else to do, nor any knowledge of whether the situation had just been viliorated or saved, he swore beneath his breath – a quiet litany of curses which could have been meant for either of them.

_"__Merde! Ca me fait chier... fils de salop__..."_

Strange as it might seem, that provided release in a manner perhaps nothing else could. Valjean's head rose a little and he gave a laugh, shaken amusement bedecked in tears. "I thought keepers of the peace held civil tongues in their heads."

He uttered a short laugh of his own at such a complaint and released his hold on Valjean's shoulders. "You think it is beneath me to curse? Come now – when you dragged me from the river you were nothing but a stream of invectives."

Valjean twisted round. "I had thought you were insensible."

Javert stepped again to his own side of the table and grinned, a smile of satisfaction. "I was."

And in that phrase Valjean realised he had just confirmed something that hitherto the Inspector had only guessed.

Javert snorted at his expression of regret, but it was triumph and amusement without malice. "You are human for all the grace and lack that such entails. You spent a long night convincing me it was not such a bad thing to be. And you were right. So now it is my place to tell you: we strive and struggle, we curse and fall, we fight in confusion and rise again. We cannot be symbols or saints. Such a thing is doomed to fail from the start – and any God worth the attention would not damn us for our failure. That we aspire, that we try – that we battle – that, _that_ is our mark of worth."

(You are no doubt aware that in the same manner as there is pleasing architecture and Classical Proportion, so too there is truth and then something more profound by far. As a man, Javert had told only one lie in his entire life, and yet, what he spoke then was the purest thing he had ever given voice to.)

Such an idea was not new to Valjean, he who had seen how cruelly life might treat the innocent turning them wretched no matter what road they strived along. But whilst he had freely spent pity and second chances upon a hundred souls – more – whom he had seen to be in need, he had never stopped to lavish such mercy upon himself. It was only now, being told this truth by a man he had once hated, then admired and later saved, that Valjean really understood. And like all men gifted great truths, he was utterly unready to receive it. "I - I should go," he stuttered, his heart hammering in his ribs urging him to run, to take flight from all he could not accept, from all that threatened.

Javert's tone held once more that knowing arrogance of the hunter who sees his prey trapped. "Where? To sleep in a ditch? I think not. The bed is yours. I had assigned it as such the moment I beheld you at my door."

"I could not imposition you."

An amused look which sought to hide beneath acidity but failed. "Do you snore?"

The other man stared back at him knowing full well he was caught but unable to find what fetter bound him. "Snore?"

"Yes. Do you snore, twist about, suffer terrible nightmares or go walking in the middle of the night?"

"I... No."

"Ah, well, that is settled. In that case there is room enough for two and it shall not be an imposition."

In that Valjean saw the wolf unshackled had lost none of his ferocity or his moments of grandeur, none of his snarl and bite: but had regained what had likely been hidden all along – an occasional playfulness that delighted in nipping just to vex. The sevedical humour which had once passed below the noses of those in Paris had been allowed a freer reign in Saint-Jean-de-Braye.

At that moment Valjean's thoughts crashed together; lack of food and sleep, too much strain and a broken heart and now to have this once-demon, this friend, this severe man tease at his expense and offer kinship was of a sudden too much. His breath tightened in his throat and his eyes stung and he felt himself the most confused and wretched creature on God's earth, he who after the Bishop Myriel's blessing had thought to put such confusions behind him.

We behold what Valjean did not: a look of deep concern cross the Inspector's face. "Come now," he offered. "Rest."

"And it will be better in the morning?" There was an edge of bitterness to his words.

The Inspector gave a wry smile and a shake of his head. "No. The morning will be what it is, no more no less." He was not a man to offer platitudes, nor even indulge in optimism, yet his unadorned truth was to Valjean strangely reassuring. "But it will be morning. The world will turn, the sun will rise, and if you have the will for it you might better your situation."

"I have the will for very little."

"So I see. But I myself have found I have quite the store. And steel or advice might be lent as easily as a blanket. Or a shirt." He sighed. "I am not a man others easily offer companionship to. But when it has been offered, I am not so base as to throw it back in a friend's face." He gave one of his particular and lupine smiles, a quirk of narrow lips and a wry flash of teeth. "What say you?"

And he offered Valjean his hand.

* * *

**Brief Notes:**

As before in 'Resignation' - if you would like a suggestion of slash, read the next chapter. Otherwise, here is the perfect place to stop.

PS - I've taken liberties with the whole Egyptian/Rosetta Stone thing as it was only decoded in the 1820s so there probably wasn't a lot of information about Egyptian religion. And, yes, I know Ma'at has a feather not a leaf. Also I have a habit of using words that haven't been in the OED since 1840. Sorry – I like them =)

'The Resignation of Inspector Javert' was very much my attempt at a Hugo pastiche with added decorative prose. 'Exile' however, was far less of a pastiche – even from the beginning I knew that I was writing a pastiche of my pastiche of Hugo. In other words, I try to keep the characters and setting true to their times, but since this is a bit of silliness to keep my stupid traitorous brain functional at 2am, I'm not gonna worry about it that much. If you'd like to read real Hugo, what on earth are you doing here? =P

If you would like to see what my version of Javert looks like, go to deviant art and type 'wraithwitch' into their search engine. There is a pic on the first page titled 'javert' and that's him. albeit a little young =P

Thank you for reading, please leave a review. In theory I've entertained or vexed you for bloody pages on end, that *does* deserve a review – even a smiley or unhappy face would work. (It'll take you three seconds and it's only polite my darlings.)

PPS - I mostly blame this on Dabuge who after 'Resignation' said, 'I'm too polite to beg for a sequel where Valjean and Javert sit and snipe and philosophize at each other some more, but I'd still like one.' And I said 'Just as well - I'm done with Hugo.' Aaaannd then I wrote this. Damn. Thank you lots also to Nimue I Am, Feuilly and Insanemistosingsmore. Even if I have been dispirited you lot have been excited about new chapters and so have encouraged me to get my act together instead of ditching everything. You four are all darling and this story has been finished and posted here only really because you wanted to read it =) xxx


	6. Chapter 6

There are in this world some distances which cannot be traversed, for they are not within our sphere to breach them. Javert offered his hand, and in that offer was more besides, but it was up to Valjean to bridge the gap should he choose, and decide what manner of reconciliation was reached.

For what seemed to them both was centuries but in truth scant seconds of time, Valjean considered all that was being gifted to him should he decide to accept it. In that infinite moment, Javert's patience was absolute.

At last, with a hesitancy born of fear in one who deems themselves undeserving, Valjean bridged that small and desolate space between them, and grasped Javert's arm, clasping hand to hand and wrist to wrist.

Javert levered him to his feet, and they stood like that in further silence, the Inspector's knife-grey eyes looking upon Valjean's darker and more harrowed gaze.

"When one begins life with nothing," Javert said quietly, "One schools oneself to never miss what one has. It is all too easily lost or taken away. In my life, I have looked upon all I have gained with the same eye as all I have lost: as a fleeting thing neither fêted nor mourned, for to do either is folly – it is the way of the world to change." A tilting of the head and a tensing of the jaw. "As such, I have not missed you. And were you to leave I would not miss you now. But that is my way; it does not lessen the fact that I would be..." the slightest of pauses and stress upon the next word, "honoured, should you stay." Here he gave a rueful smile as he mapped the direction of Valjean's expression. "No," he commanded, "don't look like that unless it is my offer that displeases you."

Valjean's eyes widened with an edge of anxiety and he shook his head, tried to form the words to explain how he wished to accept such an offer but could not in good conscience because he did not find himself worthy...

Javert did not possess Valjean's easy empathy, but he was all too adept at reading between the lines of another's expression, especially when it was writ so plain across their face.

"Valjean," he said quietly, the opening to a longer explanation that lost itself in a sigh. "I am no good at this," he admitted with a supremely crooked smile. There passed a second of silence, brimful of potential. The Inspector had ever found it difficult to explain himself and this was perhaps hardest of all. (It is one thing to acquiesce to circumstance, it is quite another to instigate them of one's own volition.) He gazed upon the man before him and knew, as any with any sense, that in some way this was a dance: if nothing else, they were as close chest to chest as partners in a waltz. Valjean had accepted the invitation, but it was up to Javert himself to lead, to take initiative and plot the timing of the music they moved to. He allowed his eyes to convey in their look an eloquence he was more in the habit of shutting away; but even as he bestowed it, he knew that was not enough.

He made a short sound, a huff and semi-laugh together, then, "Damn your scruples," he declared, and tugged Valjean closer to him and into a kiss that possessed that same careful yet meaningful manner in which he himself had once been kissed and never forgot.

Lips parted from their brief embrace but still brow was close to brow and eyes viewed one another barely an inch apart. "Come to bed," Javert ordered. "No more, no less - sleep – you are exhausted." The light within his eyes changed, a sliver of hope, a dash of desperation to be interpreted how it may. _"Stay."_ Such a simple command – although in truth it was more entreaty – one word that held within it a wealth of possibilities. "And in the morning, let us see what path might be wrought," he said, showing he was not ignorant of those possibilities, and the tone of his voice had not been an accident.

"I..."

A twist of annoyance. "If you say something in disparagement of yourself I shall lose all patience with you."

Words struggled from his throat to articulate the most petty of protests "I – I have no..."

He smiled, a flash of God-given inspiration allowing him to both cut and counter what had scarce been aired. "You already have a shirt here. Come. It's past time you claimed it."

And with that he silenced all of Valjean's objections.


End file.
